A Hasty KING LEAR at The Shed - Review

The great dome of heaven hangs over the stage at The Shed’s Griffin Theater. With a hole at its center, it resembles an eye, the swirling cosmos projected onto its blue iris (projection design by Nina Dunn). King Lear, often considered Shakespeare’s greatest work, is as much about familial discord and the corrupting influence of power as it is about sight—the act of seeing or being seen and what happens when one loses sight of oneself. 

After banishing his youngest daughter Cordelia because she won’t profess her love to him in exchange for a third of his land, the Earl of Kent (played with scene-stealing aplomb by Eleanor de Rohan), one of Lear’s most loyal allies now on the verge of being banished as well for speaking out against this decision, implores: “See better, Lear.”

He, of course, doesn’t listen and banishes her, too. Thus begins the unspooling of the King and his family. 

In this production, directed by a tripartite directing team (Rob Ashford, Lucy Skilbeck, and Kenneth Branagah, one of our great contemporary Shakespeareans, who also stars as Lear), it’s a brisk unspooling. Having shaved the text down to a 2-hour running time with no intermission, the breakneck pacing doesn’t give the audience a chance to absorb the gravity of the drama or recognize the mounting stakes. One scene bleeds right into the next, which levels the play’s biggest moments. 

As far as Shakespeare goes, Lear is pretty plot-heavy, which makes the full-speed-ahead pacing all the more puzzling. Besides Lear and his three daughters, there’s also trouble in the house of Lear’s ally Gloucester, whose illegitimate son Edmund (the delightfully wicked Dylan Corbett-Bader), in order to inherit his father’s throne, convinces him that his legitimate son Edgar (Doug Colling, nimble and impish) is leading a plot to kill him, while also somehow finding the time to seduce Goneril and Regan, Lear’s married daughters. Edgar is forced to leave home and wander the land disguised as a mad beggar. Gloucester’s blind faith in Edmund destroys his family. By the end of the play, Gloucester loses both eyes and is banished from the kingdom he once served.

When the raging Lear wanders out onto the heath in the middle of a great storm, having been thrown out by his two ungrateful daughters, it should feel like an occasion—it’s one of Shakespeare’s greatest scenes. Besides the clever use of stage and set (set design by Jon Bausor, who also designed the Neolithic costumes), it fails to make an impact. 

This is not to say it isn’t well acted. Branagh’s expert facility with the text and language creates a fully-realized Lear, whose descent from strong but aging king to raving mad man is nuanced, despite the limited amount of time he has to get there. I only wish Deborah Alli and Saffron Coomber, as Goneril and Regan, respectively, had the chance to show us more shades of their characters, who too easily fall into villainy. Jessica Revell’s Cordelia is a specter—Lear’s favorite, but why?—who we don’t get a chance to understand, but Revell’s turn as The Fool brings much needed levity to a tragic story.

What works best is the New Stone Age period in which this adaptation is set. This isn’t a Lear of glittering crowns and opulent thrones. It’s Ancient Britain, a time when, armed only by makeshift spears and wooden shields, its people were driven by our basest needs: food, shelter, safety. It makes sense, then, that these people might make rash, primal decisions—they don’t have the luxury to sit around and think. The fight direction by Bret Yount and choreography by Aletta Collins skillfully convey the barbarism of these unsophisticated times. 

The directors astutely begin this production with a ritual, grounding the play and its people in a pagan tradition. It’s a smart move for a piece in which the forces of nature cause once great men to descend into madness, where those who upset the social order—child turning against parent, parent turning against child—are punished for their sins.

As Lear dies beside Cordelia, the daughter he turned away yet the one who proves most loyal, his last words are an urgent, “Look there, look there!” It’s a plea to those who are still living to see, to really see the world and those loyal to you for what it is and what they are, as he finally does, when it’s too late.

If only I had been given more time to look, I might’ve found more to see.

King Lear runs at The Shed’s Griffin Theater through December 15th. For tickets and more information, visit here.